What Is Effective?

If there was one thing that I could teach the world, it would be to ask:

What is effective?

There are many ways of judging things in the world, and many different truths to know. There’s not just one “secret” to the universe. That’s a trick that people play on you to make you confused, this idea that if you could just somehow know “the one secret,” then you would be wise. So I’m not saying this is like, the one secret to something. I’m just saying that, if I had to pick one thing to fix about everybody’s mental processes, it would be this.

What do I mean? Well, people seem to make judgments or decisions about things all the time. Sometimes they make a decision to do nothing. Sometimes they make a decision to sit around and think about things. They make decisions to eat, to go to school, to work, all these sorts of things. But often, I think, people do not make judgments about how they make these decisions. That is, sometimes people don’t think about questions like, “How would I choose what to do right now?”

A simple question that one can ask about anything that one is doing or chooses to do is, “Would that be effective?” It helps cut past any confusion that might come from being upset, or tired, or hungry, or whatever. Like, one might think, “What I want to do right now is to sit here and think about this.” But ask yourself, “Would that be effective?” Because I can almost certainly promise you that sitting around and thinking about it is not going to be effective.

I’m not saying that all things that are effective are right. There are many factors to consider about something being right or wrong, in particular the effect that action will have on the future and all of the other parts of life that surround you. But even if you wanted to be wrong, you would ask yourself how to effectively be wrong, wouldn’t you? I mean, if you actually wanted to accomplish that, which I doubt you do, but hey, it’s up to you.

There are other problems in life, too, that can bar a person from being able to accomplish things even when they know what is the effective thing to do. But I see lots of people doing things that I can’t imagine they’ve even asked themselves if doing that thing would be effective.

You might ask yourself, “Effective at what?” To some degree that’s up to you, but probably you have some things you’d like to accomplish in life. Look over the choices you have in terms of accomplishing that. What could you do about it that would be effective? I’m not saying it has to be some grand splash all at once where everything just goes right. Sometimes “effective” means taking it for the long haul, starting small and growing big in small steps, or just getting where you want to inch by inch. So just look, just ask, “What is something, anything, that I could DO about this that would be in any way EFFECTIVE?” And if you don’t know, ask yourself, “What effective thing could I do to find out the answer?

This has been, probably, the secret of my success in life, to some degree. I know that in order to live and be successful, one must do those things that are effective. I’m not perfect and I haven’t always done the things that are the most effective at any given moment, but I’ve at least always known that being effective was the criteria that I would use.

This is especially important in judging data–are any of these data going to actually be effective in accomplishing what you want to handle? This is most important, these days, in the fields of health, eating, money, and the mind–all areas where there are MANY attempts to feed people ineffective data in order to extract money and influence from them. It boggles my mind constantly that people believe so many things that are not actually effective at doing what they say they are going to do. On top of that, for most of these things it’s obvious that it wouldn’t be effective if you understand the basic principles of the subjects of money, eating, health, and the mind.

That perhaps brings me to one of the most important parts here, which is that of all the things that I’ve found effective in life, KNOWLEDGE is the most effective. Not just having data and being able to repeat it, but truly understanding things and knowing what is true and what is false–that’s the _most_ effective thing I’ve come across in life. It’s often been surprising to me when I come across people who don’t seem to want to know about things. That’s basically them saying that they don’t want to be effective in some areas. That’s fine in many areas–there are certainly things that I don’t care about and wouldn’t be interested in learning–but when it’s something that affects everybody, like the basics of how to run a country, the truth about the mind or the universe, the simplicity of nutrition, or the basic idea that you have to provide something of value in order to make money, then it boggles my mind that people don’t want to know about it. It’s not going to make your life any better to ignore it. I’m not even saying you have to be an expert. I’m just saying that, all things considered, it’s better to be effective than not, and if you’re going to be effective, you have to know.